I took Athlon'sFirst and Second team preseason All Conference players from the Power 5 confrences and omitted Kickers, Punters, and Underclassmen. Unfortunately, Athlon did not identify Red shirt sophomores for me.

I the added the rest of the smaller conferences First team players and the first team of the FBS.

So My dataset has some holes, but I think it's thorough enough for now. I made my pivot table and have my 376 prospects listed by school below....

September to January is 4 months. That's over 100 players per month to at least get an impression on....pretty sure that won't happen so I just need to see as many as possible between the kickoff classic and the National Championship game and see what I end up with. I'll then have from January to draft day to fill in as many gaps as I can and I'll STILL be pretty short. Big upside is that about a quarter of these guys will stay in school for their Senior season.

If I have less than 100 players that I haven't seen come the first pick, I'll consider it a success.

So here's the plan. I watch as many games as I can to get a take on as many players as I can. The nice thing about College Football is that there's anywhere from 4-6 games on at a time on Saturdays. Outside of the service academies, there will be few games that I can skip for lack of prospects. Hell, I have 4 prospects playing when Bowling Green is @ Kent State on Oct. 31st. Unfortunately, I am at the mercy of Cox Cable as far as what games I get to see.

So the plan here is to print off a sheet per game I see with the prospects in each school the morning of and settle in. During the game I scribble some notes on each guy based on what I see and try to codify it into some sort of grade. I came up with a number system.

1- Excellent Player, among the best at his position (Solomon Thomas, Budda Baker, OJ Howard)

2- Very good player, needs some development, but should start very early in NFL career. (Demarcus Walker, Taylor Moton)

3- Average player, will need to add/lose weight and develop skillset to start. Can play in rotation or special teams. (Zach Banner)

4-Below average player, significant development required. Potential to be a JAG at the next level. (Dwayne Smoot)

5- Poor player, significant flaws in his game. Do not want. (Adam Bisnowaty)

0- No data. (Pretty much everyone the Bucs drafted after OJ Howard)

Number system will be a big help in sorting out my positionals....or so I hope.

Don't give me too much credit. Since I'm going to try and get some sort of take on over 400 players, it's impossible for me have an in-depth take on any of them.

Guys that jump off the tape and are obvious top picks will be easy to spot and guys who are just plain awful will be easy to spot. But those guys will be a fraction of the whole thing. It's the 350 or so players in the middle that will be toughest to get a bead on particularly since the majority of them will get graded by me based on about 20 minutes of film from one game or at best while watching a game where he's surrounded by other prospects. Not a perfect system at all.

That's why I'm not going to try and anticipate where a guy will be drafted. What I'm trying to shoot for is when the Bucs draft a guy in the 5th round, I can come in here and say "Joe Schmuckatelli from Whatsamaata U looked to me like a really good player in what little I saw of him when he played against a top program. I scored him a 2 and he could be a steal in this round."

When everyone else dives into the tape for their own analysis, we'll see if my method is worth 2 shits.

I love having the spreadsheet, but I tried too hard to fill it all in. I'd have to be a full time scout to pull it off.

End of the day, I had a decent take on about 100-130 players. tendencies mostly. I didn't spend much effort trying to gauge which round grade they would have or anything like that. And it did set me up for next year a little. For example:

Brett Rypien at Boise State will get some hype because of his name this year, but he was absolute trash against Troy back in August. I saw nothing to suggest he's an NFL QB. Watch for another Washington Husky. Trey Adams would have been the top LT this year, but injured a knee and is returning for his senior season. Mitch Hyatt out of Clemson is another one. Damien Harris is my top RB in this class right now. But Bryce Love will get all the hype. When I took a look at Christian Wilkins, DE out of Clemson. I noted he stacks his blocker well, but had some trouble shedding after he locks them up. He's quick in stunts tho.